


welcome to the wasteland

by janie_tangerine



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King, Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Crossover, M/M, Multi, come on they even have the same name, cracky ship is cracky but you know they'd work so well together, spoilers for all of book VII of the DT, spoilers until late S5 for SPN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-15
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:10:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Eddie stares at him for a second and then lets out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Man, that’s fucking awesome. Finally I get someone else to share this clusterfuck of an afterlife with and it’s another Dean? Whoever arranged this sure has a sense of humor.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foundwanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundwanders/gifts).



> Written for the help_chile auctions a couple of years ago. Title is stolen from Blind Guardian, SPN belongs to the respective owners, the DT belongs to Stephen King, nothing is mine. Also, you know you want this pairing.

Then

_At times, Eddie remembers meeting the kid once in 1986. Maybe he remembers it at all because back then he wasn’t at his worst and in that particular moment he wasn’t high. Well, if he had been, he wouldn’t have been sitting at Burger King with his double Whopper in front of him. Then again, he had spent the last day kind of high and he was hungry, so he had just gone for that and a Pepsi. That’s not the point, though. The point is that him not being high is the only reason he remembers that particular meeting. He should say the kids instead of the kid, since they were two, but just one had stuck with him._

_Anyway, that’s how it had gone. See it and see it very well._

__

 

_Eddie is sitting at his table near the bar and eating his burger when he hears two kids discussing while in line. The older one, he has to be about seven or eight, is counting money in an old battered purse, to the last cent, and obviously doing some math in his head. The second, about four, doesn’t seem to have an idea that they are running low on money. Eddie notices the older one eying a children’s menu first, a Whopper junior then. He shakes his head and passes on to the fries, and he’s obviously trying to realize how to best use his money to buy as much as he can when the younger shakes him by the hand._

_“Can’t I get Chicken Tenders?” he asks, and it’s not even nagging or whining, and the tone isn’t the one spoiled brats use when they want something at all costs. He’s just asking nicely, and there’s something about the younger kid’s earnest, wide eyes that Eddie thinks no one could refuse; and he can just see it as the older one just nods and ruffles the other’s hair._

_“Sure thing,” he answers, his voice tight in a way that Eddie can barely perceive, and then it’s their turn._

_They go sit in the table next to his and there’s just one tray between them, and it gets pushed in front of the younger kid._

_“Come on, see to finish it,” the older one says._

_“Dean, you saw the apple pie? Aren’t you having it? You always…”_

_“Sammy, ‘m not hungry. Next time, okay? Just eat your lunch,” Dean answers turning his head to the next table where someone is devouring a triple Whopper while raining ketchup on their French fries. Now, if Eddie isn’t an idiot, and he isn’t, the kid is fucking starving. A minute passes during which Dean searches for something inside his small backpack, then shakes his head and stands up._

_“I’m gonna get some water one second. Don’t you move, okay?”_

_Sam nods and gets back to his chicken, and Dean stands in order to go to the bar, where there’s almost no line._

_As he keeps his voice low and asks the girl if she could please give him a small bottle of water even if he doesn’t have money anymore, Eddie feels his heart positively break and his hunger disappear. All of a sudden the remaining half of his burger looks disgusting; then the girl says that no, she can’t or she could get fired. Dean tries again but gets another refusal and Eddie has understood way too well why is it that he wants water that bad. He casts a look at the counter’s direction and Jesus, the kid looks like shame incarnated as he makes his way back to his own table. Eddie has an idea that he’d cut his throat before stealing a fry from his brother, and damn, he thinks, fuck this. Henry would call him a girl if he was here, he’s sure about that, but Henry isn’t around and if he doesn’t act he’ll either throw up or do something stupid or feel guilty at least until he gets his next fix, and it might be a while until that happens._

_Before Dean can get back to his table, Eddie turns in his direction._

_“Hey, you. Can you come here a second?” he asks, trying to keep his voice even, and thank fuck that this morning he opted for long sleeves and that his arms are covered. “I swear, I don’t want to make you regret it.”_

_Dean_ does _come closer, while keeping an eye on his brother and looking extremely wary._

_“What the hell do you want?”_

_Eddie doesn’t really mind the swearing. It would maybe be amusing, if the circumstances weren’t what they are._

_“When did you last eat something? Don’t fuck with me, I recognize a lie when I hear one,” he says, not adding that he knows that much about lying because of goddamn experience._

_“… two days ago,” the kid answers, his shoulders still slumped, huge green eyes staring at the ground._

_“Jesus fucking Christ,” Eddie mutters. “Listen, I can see you’d hate charity and stuff. But if I let you get out of here without something in your stomach I’ll… I’ll… crap, I just can’t do that, okay? It’s touching that you won’t take a fry from your brother and believe me, I know the feeling, but you look like you’ll faint any second and I just can’t. Come on, let’s get back there,” he says as he stands up._

_“Mister, you don’t need to…” Dean starts, even if it’s clear that he’s not really putting his heart into trying to dissuade him. Eddie drops to his knees at the kid’s height._

_“First thing, I’m fucking twenty-two, not fifty. Which means, I’m not a mister. My name’s Eddie, by the way. Second thing, since from what I gathered my surname is your name…”_

_“Seriously? Your surname is_ Dean _?”_

_“Yeah. That said, I can’t really let a fellow Dean starve. Third, if you don’t go choosing whatever you want and make me pay, I’ll feel fucking offended.”_

_“Are you for real?”_

_“Indeed I am. Come on,” he says as he stands up again and goes towards the bar. Dean takes a look and says that a small burger along with a small portion of fries will do; Eddie pretends to go along with it and when he orders he keeps the small Whopper part of it but switches the small portion of fries with the medium, adds some Onion Rings and a piece of apple pie. And a large Pepsi, since he’s there already._

_“There you go,” he says handing Dean the tray after he’s done. As he does, he thinks that no one has ever looked at him with such gratefulness his entire life and it feels like a punch to his gut. He decides it’s because Dean’s just doing what Henry would have done for him in the same situation, even if there’s a part of his brain that tells him bullshit, Henry never skipped a meal his whole life in order to keep him fed, don’t even think about not eating for two whole days._

_“Hey, that was no hardship. Just promise me you’re not going to keep some of this for dinner or something.”_

_Dean has the face of someone who just got caught but then just smiles and shakes his head. “Yeah, okay. Thank you. Really.”_

_“As I said, my pleasure.”_

_He lets Dean get back to his table and then shakes his head and throws away his half-eaten lunch. He can’t stomach the sight of it. Before he leaves, he glances at the table. Half of the burger he bought Dean is gone already._

_He leaves the diner feeling like he did something worthy for the first time since he found out Henry had a thing for smack and like he’s a decent person for the first time since he started having a thing for smack, too._

A short while ago

_Dean says yes standing in Bobby’s yard at four AM, two days after they don’t manage to kill Pestilence and one after realizing that Death is on the loose._

_He hopes they forgive him, and he hopes that Michael didn’t lie to him._

Now.

 

A man in black flies across the desert, a gunslinger follows and that’s really not what Dean had been expecting to see as he opens his eyes.

He blinks twice and when his vision clears, he realizes that he’s sitting against a wall, made of wood maybe, that there’s sand beneath him and in his eyes and in his mouth, and that both the man in black and the gunslinger are already almost out of sight.

He takes a shaky breath and tries to turn his head, hoping to see Sam and Cas because that was what should happen, right? Michael had said he’d restore him. And he’s conscious, so Michael has to have done it. Right? He can’t have lied. He can’t have…

“Sam…? Cas…?” he croaks, and then a shadow moves and he hears a voice.

“Nope and nope. Sorry about that but if you’re searching for someone you know, this isn’t your lucky day. By the way, welcome to Mid-World, or the crazy afterlife that comes with it, I guess. I wish I understood that myself. And I wish I knew how come you’re here at all but hey, one doesn’t ever refuse company when he can have some, or am I wrong? By the way, there’s no one else around, so whoever you’re looking for, forget about that.”

Dean blinks again and turns on his right, taking a look at the guy now crouched next to him; he’s positive he has never seen him before, or maybe not because he looks half-familiar, but he can’t even try to place him. He looks twenty-five or twenty-six, has long-ish chestnut hair brushing over his collarbone, he wears jeans and a light blue flannel and has hazel-green eyes which Dean thinks would be enough to make a good number of girls part legs, if the owner looked at them the right way. He’d be close to pretty, if it wasn’t for a nasty scar over his left eye. A very nasty scar. Which looks like one that you could get if someone shoots you in the head. Except that you rarely survive that kind of wound.

“What the _fuck_?” he settles on. And what else could he say when he just realized that he’s in a goddamn desert but that the scenery is sort of _shifting_ and now he sees a sort of small house where the gunslinger stops in order to talk with some red headed guy who owns a crow? He can’t hear much, but it’s kind of like watching a movie from the first row. And anyway this desert is all rocks and sand and shit and Dean feels like he ended up in the last section of _The Waste Land_. Wouldn’t Sam be shocked to find out about his refined literary taste once again?

“Yeah, I hear you. That whole clearing after the path shit that I was fed? Not the real deal. Let me tell you, for how I went out, I’d have wanted at least the seventy-two virgins, not my dihn’s life on IMAX without the Dolby surround. With me included in the deal, too. Sucks _ass_.”

“Wait. Wait wait wait. You are _dead_ and this is the life of someone you know?”

“Oh, it’s my life, too. I’ll come into the picture soon enough. I know how fast it goes by heart by this point. And by the way, before we try to realize how the hell is it that you’re in _my_ afterlife, what about introducing? I’m Eddie, son of.... right, sorry, you probably don’t give a crap either way. Eddie Dean, not exactly nice to meet you in these circumstances.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Dean breathes.

“Far from my intentions. Why would I jerk around the only company I got since I died? And why’s that anyway?”

“My _name_ is Dean. Dean Winchester.”

Eddie stares at him for a second and then lets out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Man, that’s fucking awesome. Finally I get someone else to share this clusterfuck of an afterlife with and it’s another Dean? Whoever arranged this sure has a sense of humor.”

“No shit. And by the way, you died ‘cause you got shot in the head?”

“Yeah. More or less. I gather you died, too?”

“Well, not exactly but I might have as well. I let an archangel possess me because he told me he’d restore me after he was done, but apparently it was too much hassle and he just burned me outta my own body. Fucking liar.”

“And how come would you let an archangel wear you to the prom?” Eddie asks without even blinking.

“’Cause I wanted to avoid an apocalypse. Jesus, if you’re dead, it means the dick really lied to me. Sam and Cas will fucking kill me. Except they can’t.”

“Sam and Cas? Y’know, I might want to hear this. In exchange, I can explain you _that_ ,” Eddie says nodding towards the gunslinger coming closer to a station in the desert.

“Seriously? You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Man, I’ve _seen_ crazy. I’ve fucking _killed_ crazy. And if I learned something since I left my world for this wacked Frontierland, it’s to appreciate a good story. To be honest, I’m pretty sure you’ll think I’m a nutjob when you hear mine.”

“Fine. Whatever. Sam is my little brother. Cas… well, Castiel actually, but Cas is how he goes by lately… He’s my angel, I guess.”

\--

“Dude, your brother was a fucking douchebag,” Dean mutters as the guy Eddie calls Roland is having a talk with some kind of wacky oracle with nymphomaniac tendencies. And Jesus, _he_ knows what it means to look after your younger sibling, and while Dean might not have passed the test with flying marks (with the demon blood and the codependency and all), no one couldn’t say that he hasn’t fucking tried. Not to mention that he gave his life for Sam enough times to be enough proof of the goodness of his attempt. Sure as fuck he never would have hooked Sam up on fucking _heroin_.

“Don’t I know that. Fuck. And I’m not even sure I ever got over it. Maybe I did sometime near the end, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Christ, I raised Sam since I was fucking four. I’d have never… ah, well. Douchebag. Seriously. No offense. But at least you seem turned out fine, in spite of that.”

“Believe me, in retrospective I wish I had some other example under my eyes. Anyway, so, first you went to Hell because you sold your soul for your brother and then the dick angel raised you up?”

“In a nutshell, even if he hasn’t been a dick for a while.”

“Christ, sounds like Roland. He just comes along and starts talking in my head, turns my life upside down in three hours and he convinces me to get here with my brother’s fucking severed head in the same room. He was such a jerk in the beginning.”

“And in the end?”

“In the end he was the last person I spoke to. My wife included. But well, long story. Short story is, I think I fucking loved him in the end. Not like _that_ , maybe, but… it was complicated.”

“Where… where are all of them now?” Dean asks warily, realizing that the answer can’t be that good. Eddie shrugs and brings one knee forward, folding it up.

“You’d find out soon enough, it’s all in your new favorite movie in front of you, but since it’s a long story, I’ll cut it short for you. When I died I was kind of really sure that I wouldn’t have been the only one to go. I just had that feeling, you know? Anyway. I told her I’d see her at the clearing at the end of the path. ‘Cause you know, they sell it as what’s closest to Heaven, in this part of the world. Point is, I end up here and I see everything happening in real time. Jake died, too, but he never showed up here. And at the end Roland and Suze were the only two left. I figured she’d go forward if only because I’d have wanted it, but… she just… left him and went through a door.”

“One of those space dimensional door things?”

“Yeah. That. And guess what, _other_ alternate worlds exist. She’s now living happily ever after in another New York in some other goddamn world with another me who looks like me and sort of talks like me but who isn’t me, and his kid brother who looks like Jake etcetera etcetera, and she doesn’t remember much if anything at all. About Roland, he went up on that tower and he found out that he had already been there.”

“ _What_?”

“It’s his curse or something. He starts from the battle where all his friends die and gets to the tower, calling new people every time, or not calling them, I don’t know because I can only see the story I was in. And every time he arrives at the top he falls down and goes back to the beginning until he does everything right, and don’t ask me what the fuck it is because hell if I know.”

Eddie’s shoulders slump forward as he shakes his head. “And that’s all, folks.”

“Jesus,” Dean mutters. “It’s so fucked up that not even angels on our side of the world would come up with it. And they’re fucked up enough. Er. Crap. I’m sorry?”

“Yeah, crap indeed. But hey, I’d do it all over again anyway. I got to know them, right? Even if I’d have spared myself _this_. I’d just really like to know what’s the fucking purpose of it.”

“But… aren’t you… er, pissed? About your wife, I mean.”

Eddie snorts and keeps on looking straight in front of him where Roland is talking to Jake.

“At the beginning? You don’t even wanna know. But I got over it. She got a reward and she deserved it. Me, I got myself a first row seat at the movie of my life. Ain’t that _amazing_?”

“Still beats me. Hell, I die and I end up in another guy’s afterlife?”

He tries to joke as he says that, really, it could’ve been a lot worse, but he doesn’t miss the look of sympathy that Eddie shoots at him before turning his eyes back to the ground.

“Beats me, too.”

“Well, Hell was worse. Doesn’t change that Michael is a goddamn dick. Should teach me never to trust angels.”

“But you do trust one, don’t you?” Eddie asks, sounding interested, and Dean figures that it really isn’t a point in beating around the bush. They’re dead, for fuck’s sake.

“Cas? Yeah. Him, I do. Then again. He dragged me out.”

“And you had a thing.”

“How the fuck would you know that?” Dean asks, sounding slightly surprised.

“It’s in your voice, man. I know how one sounds when you talk about someone you’ve got a thing with. So, how was it?”

“… let’s say it wasn’t much platonic, on my part, but it ain’t like I ever told him. And like I’ll get to tell him now. Jesus, if I’m here…”

“What?”

“Well, then Michael doesn’t even want to restore me, which means that when he vacates the prom dress, I’ll be a goddamn vegetable or something. Or my body will. And those two will get stuck with it even if I’m not there because I know how they roll. Jesus. This sucks so much.”

Suddenly, a hand reaches his shoulder and squeezes lightly. Dean doesn’t shake it away.

\--

“You know something,” Eddie tells him as they more or less take a walk around the place and the screen which isn’t a screen but just what’s in front of them moves along, showing Eddie freaking out on an airplane ( _mine and Roland’s first meeting, that was something_ ), “I have this idea that Roland would’ve liked you.”

“Me? Why the hell would he? He seems a tough guy enough, I doubt he’d need _me_ of all people.”

“Pff. Man, I was on fucking _heroin_ and a lot more useless than you when he showed up inside my head. And anyway, have you ever forgotten the face of your father?”

“The fuck of a question is that? _No_ , of course not. Fucker sold his soul for me, even if he never was that great at parenting. I’m freaking wearing his clothes. I couldn’t even begin to.”

“What I thought. Much better than I did,” Eddie murmurs, but he doesn’t sound annoyed. If anything, he sounds amused. What the hell.

\--

“I miss them so much,” they both say at random at the same time while Eddie kisses Roland’s cheek behind their shoulders. Eddie had his back turned at the entire scene because he said he couldn’t stand that, and Dean can get why after glancing at it and feeling horrible because it’s way, way too intimate and he feels like he shouldn’t be watching it.

Eddie lets out a laugh which isn’t entirely genuine and shakes his head before turning towards Dean.

“Why did you even say yes? I mean, it’s not like I had it much better, but I didn’t exactly get myself killed because I called it upon myself.”

Dean shrugs and wraps the jacket tighter around his frame.

“I could say to save the world, but… if you want the truth, he promised me he’d keep my brother safe. And Cas and Bobby too. And while angels are dicks and I know even too well, I made sure he gave me his word before. I just hope that he kept it better than _this_. ‘Cause he gave me his word that he’d restore me, as stated.”

“Jesus Christ, man, have you ever fucking done something for yourself?” Eddie asks, sounding halfway between shocked, sad and understanding.

Dean thinks about it for a second. “If you are of the opinion that I sold my soul for myself because I couldn’t stand the idea of my brother being dead, as a lot of people seem to think, _that_. If you aren’t… then… no, I guess.” And fuck, the truth stings. It’s the first time he says it out loud. It makes him want to just disappear somewhere else and never talk about it again.

“You know,” Eddie says stepping closer as they turn and face Roland giving Susannah shooting lessons, “I used to be like you. I thought that I wasn’t really much in the big picture and that everyone else came before. My brother, especially. I just, I felt like he did so much for me, I had to give it back. And really, I’d do it all over again if only because Roland taught me that I was worth it. Not to be nosy, but has anyone tried to ever stick that into your head?”

Dean feels himself half-blushing and wishes he wasn’t having a chick-flick moment with a random dead stranger with whom he shares half a name.

“Cas, I guess. All the fucking goddamn time. And my brother too, more or less, but never in such straight terms. And Bobby tried once but I guess he understood it wasn’t going to stick. Anyway, maybe in other circumstances it’d have worked.”

“Well, let someone who knows what he’s talking about say it. Your angel guy knew what he was talking about too.”

 _How can you be so sure_?, Dean wants to ask, but instead he feels overwhelmed and so he just gives Eddie a tiny nod and doesn’t shake off the hand on his shoulder.

\--

“And so I realized that it wasn’t ever going to get jokes and it was easy as pie.”

“Dude, you seriously killed a crazy train with fucking dead chicken jokes?”

“Yeah, yeah, that was totally one of my finest moments. Sure as fuck the ride was never boring, though Roland promised the bare breasted girls, too, and they never were in the picture. Then again, you should be able to see my awesome exploit in some time. It’s the only part I kinda like relieving.”

Dean can sort of get that.

Also, when they get to the crazy train bit, he has to agree: it was nothing short of awesome.

Also, he totally respects Eddie a lot more after _that_ , not that he didn’t first; still, when a guy does something as fucking great as that, you need to give him points.

\--

“I wish I knew what this was,” Eddie snorts some time later, while his then-wife is being possessed by someone else. “I mean, why would someone just make me want to watch this shit for eternity? I knew it already, thanks so very much.”

Dean nods at that, wondering about that, too; this afterlife is just plain fucking weird. Apart from the wooden house, in which they never stepped in, everything around them just changes along with the story. He doesn’t need to sleep or eat or drink or anything else he’d need if he was alive, and Eddie doesn’t either. But he has a pulse and his heart beats; they’re pretty much like angels when they inhabit vessels, and Dean doesn’t like the analogy at all. If they walk, the whole circus follows them and they can’t get too far from the fucking house anyway, and so they mostly just spent he doesn’t know how much time talking. Since there’s no way to count time, here.

“Yeah, you’ve got a point. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to guess,” he has to agree.

“Did you hear what Jake said as he died, first?”

“Yeah. There are other worlds than these, right?”

“That. Maybe he’s somewhere else but like this, too. I don’t know. At times I’d like to. Hell, we were both dead, they could as well let us stay in the same place. Or maybe this is just another world, just wackier than everything else. After all he ended up with Roland at the beginning because he died, right? And we’re dead.”

“Good point. Y’know, if we were in the real world and I wasn’t dead and you weren’t, I’m sure you could talk me into buying everything I’ve seen here without me actually having seen it.”

“Well, it’s been said that talking too much was always my strong suit. Positively and negatively. At times I wished I could just learn to shut up.”

“Dude, you can talk to me as fucking much as you want. I’d rather have you constantly chattering than, y’know, being alone in this whole crap.”

Which is true; he doesn’t think that he could go through shit like this alone. And having company is actually quite nice.

“Bite me if that isn’t the nicest reaction to my _chattering_ that I ever received.”

Eddie half laughs then, and it sounds genuine. Dean half-smiles back.

\--

Dean has to turn his head to the wooden wall as fake-Eddie-on-screen dies.

“How many times did you say you went through this?” he asks, and Eddie turns his back to the scene and joins him in his wall-staring.

“I lost count after number twenty. As you see, it goes pretty fast.”

“How can you even stand it?” Dean asks, turning towards Eddie, needing to meet his eyes; he wouldn’t ever want to watch his own death(s), that’s for fucking sure. Eddie shrugs, in a way that reminds Dean of himself quite painfully.

“The right answer should be that at one point it doesn’t matter anymore. The truth is that I miss them so much that even this shit is better than nothing at all. That’s why I sort of get Suze. She might be with my… not exactly matching twin instead of me, but it’s still something.”

“Fuck, if it was… if it was either my brother or Cas and I _knew_ … fuck, I couldn’t do it. It’d kill me another time.” Dean admits that straight, his stare still meeting Eddie’s, and damn if he doesn’t see raw pain in the shades of green fluttering over the hazel of Eddie’s eyes.

“At the beginning I couldn’t do it either. I got adjusted. Sort of. It’s… you know. I figured, Roland has to go through his own fucking loop, this must be mine. And if he can do that… I can, right?”

“Dude, so what, I fucking crashed down into your goddamn loop? Well, sorry ‘bout that.”

“Hey, don’t be. You’re definitely not the worst company I’ve ever had.”

Somehow, at that, and at the utter sincerity that drips from Eddie’s voice, Dean feels warm in a way dead people shouldn’t be allowed to feel.

\--

“Listen, is there a reason why we can’t go inside that thing?”

“The house, you mean? I tried. It just opens at one time,” Eddie says as a writer is about to get hit by a car.

“What do you mean?”

“Every time this goddamn loop ends, everything… goes black. For a while. You feel like you’re floating in darkness and it’s… it’s fucking terrifying. It’s like being inside a black hole. The first time I had tried the door a bunch of times, but it never worked. I tried _then_ out of desperation even if I hadn’t thought it’d work, but that time it did open. It lasted… I dunno, long enough. Then when I saw light coming from the windows I went outside and there was the desert. The door shut and I couldn’t open it again until it ended for the second time. Inside it’s just… a couple rooms, one has a table, one has a bed, sparse furniture and shit, and that’s it.”

“Fuck. It’s… you know it’s freaky, right?”

“First damn thing I thought when I went through that, believe me.”

\--

Eddie is resolutely not looking at Roland meeting Susannah alone, and instead stares at Dean who stares at the wall as usual, these times, and Dean at one point feels like he’s back to his staring contests with Cas.

Which is definitely not what he needs to think about.

“Dude, is there some reason why you’re _staring_ like that?”

“Sorry,” Eddie says shaking his head. “It’s just that… there’s something that doesn’t add up. I thought about it a while ago, I don’t know why, but out of the blue I started thinking that I’m missing something. When you showed up I thought there was something half-familiar about you but then I just figured that it was the being dead thing. But there’s something nagging at me. Like it isn’t the first time I talked with someone named Dean and made that joke about me and them having the same name. Which probably happened a bunch of times, there are a lot of people named Dean around anyway, but…”

“Wait a goddamn fucking second,” Dean says, feeling like there’s something clicking into place. He has that on the tip of his tongue, a sensation of déjà-vu so strong that he feels he might faint, and then he leans a hand against the wall and remembers it.

“Fuck this shit. Of course it’s nagging at you. We already met!”

“We _what_?” Eddie asks, his head shooting up, and at least all of his concentration is on Dean and not on whatever’s happening behind them.

“It was in ’87 or late ’86. Me and Sam were in New York ‘cause dad was working a case there and we were at some Burger King and I didn’t have enough money to buy myself food.”

“Oh Jesus Christ. Yes, I remember that now… and fuck, yeah, I bought you that burger, right?”

Dean nods and stares at Eddie, who stares back blinking in disbelief, and it’s completely fucking crazy.

“Dude. I was like eight. Now I’m fucking thirty. Your face barely goddamn changed, now that I think about it. It’s just that your hair is longer.”

“And… I was twenty-two and I died at twenty-five or close to that. Fuck. You’re actually older than me now?”

Dean just stares in disbelief some more before muttering a positive answer. And then he actually falls down sitting on the ground, and Eddie sort of follows him. Dean brings a hand to his forehead, feeling his stomach clench, and everything suddenly seems too huge for him to _get_.

“Okay. This? This is fucked. Fucked in the worst kind of fucked. Do we agree?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we do,” Eddie chimes, and he’s kind of paler now that Dean pays attention.

“So we actually knew each other. Already. I can’t buy that it’s a coincidence. I mean, it can be, but… that’d be kind of too easy, right?”

“I guess. Also, here… coincidences kinda don’t happen. I have enough proof. Jesus. I should’ve remembered as soon as you told me about your brother. If only because buying you a burger was the only thing I did I could sorta feel proud of, in that time.”

“Why, you were already on the smack?”

“Not enough for you to notice I guess, but yeah. It just went downhill from there.”

Dean nods, taking the information in, and then he just shakes his head and moves slightly closer.

“Well. Alright. I guess we established that. Now, er, that doesn’t make things awkward, does it? I mean, you were nice to me, I was definitely thankful for it, end of story. Deal?”

“Deal,” Eddie says, sounding sort of relieved, and then leans his head against the wall. “It just. Everything should make me think that there’s a reason you’re here. Or a reason I’m here. Or a reason we’re both here. I just don’t get that.”

 _Believe me, I don’t either_ , Dean wants to say, and then he doesn’t and leans back fully against the wall, too. If anything, he can show some solidarity.

\--

Eddie visibly starts shuddering for the first time as soon as a sign with _Dandelo_ written over it appears; and after Dean sees what happens later… well, he can see why.

Dean brings a hand to Eddie’s shoulder without being prompted for pretty much the first time since they ended in this clusterfuck (and really, he never _starts_ things whenever they touch, even though it’s not like he ever stops Eddie when he does, for some reason he isn’t sure he wants to know) and doesn’t startle too much when suddenly Eddie covers it with his own. The skin on Eddie’s hand is rough, even if his fingers are long and their touch isn’t intruding or anything; Dean thinks that it feels kind of like his own has to feel. After all, they both handled guns for a while.

“It was supposed to be me in there,” Eddie says then, “or at least, you heard them. And it’s right, that’s what sucks. I’d have really understood that after a minute. Christ, at times I just think that it all fell apart because of fucking me.”

“Hey, I started an Apocalypse and I ended here out of my own fucking free will. My fault too, then.”

“Maybe, but I think you don’t see it in the right way. You think it was just your fault when you don’t get that you couldn’t have known and they just played you all along. At least I can see that… well, it _really_ wasn’t. My fault I mean. Saying that shit fell apart because of me doesn’t mean that it was _my_ fault. That son of a bitch who shot me was supposed to be dead and he caught me just because I was the nearest. If he had caught Suze or Jake I’d have never faulted _them_. So, I can’t fault myself. And it’s exactly the fucking same thing with you, so you shouldn’t either.”

“Yeah, you put it so well. Simple and coming in a nicely wrapped box tied up in a ribbon. Ain’t that easy, man.”

“Don’t think that I don’t know how it is. And you know, in retrospective, I was surprised that… that I was that important. I just, I had never thought that if I fell down than it’d be over for them, too. I had just figured that they’d all go forward. Apparently, it wasn’t the case. I also suspect that you don’t realize how much you were either, if you just said fucking _yes_ like that.”

“Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not true,” Dean says, and he knows it’s a weak argument, but he just can’t wrap his head around it.

“Yeah, sure. I think I just can see why that angel of yours would try to make you get that you’re worth something.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, you didn’t even meet and you talk like him anyway, except that you swear a lot more.”

“Whatever. You will get that. And fuck this, I really don’t like the next part.”

The more it goes on, the more Dean can see why.

\--

As soon as Roland steps up into the tower, everything starts shaking and Eddie grabs Dean’s arm without sparing a glance behind them.

“That’d be the fucking time,” he screams over Roland’s scream, and Dean finds himself dragged inside the house.

Everything keeps on shaking and trembling for another handful of seconds and Dean just stares at the wooden floor, waiting for it to fall open under his feet, and then it just stops.

When he raises his head and looks out of the window, everything is dark. Pitch black. There’s a completely out of place electric lamp in the corner, but if it wasn’t there, Dean thinks that they couldn’t see anything. Eddie is next to him, his hand still around his arm, and Dean doesn’t do anything to shake it away. He casts a glance around, noticing a door leading to a bedroom in front of him (and there’s another lamp in there, and that’s all the source of light there is); for the rest it’s just some house out of a fucking Leone movie, with sparse furniture, a couple of chairs, a cupboard and a battered couch.

And then his eyes go back to the window. Outside it’s still just black. Not even a star, not even a sign that there’s something out there. At one point it becomes _too much_ and Dean just turns on his right and faces Eddie, figuring that looking at someone is better than musing on what’s out there.

“That’s fucked. That’s the most fucked thing until now. You know that?”

“Don’t tell me. The first time I was sure it was gonna suck me in and… I dunno, I’d have died again or some shit like that.”

“And you’ve done this twenty times?”

“What else was I fucking going to do? There isn’t a way out, there isn’t anything, and don’t think I didn’t try. I did. I tried staying out once and I couldn’t stand it for five minutes, let alone hours. I fucking gave _everything_ for… for that quest or whatever and in the end it was just another loop and for thanks I’m stuck here and I’m forced to watch _that_ over and over, and then what?”

And Dean doesn’t know what he should answer to this. After all he also said yes because he wanted to be done. And to be honest, now that he thinks about it, he never really hoped much for Michael to bring him back. He just ran when it was the only thing he had never done all his life, and he can’t fucking fault Eddie for trying not to.

“Sorry. I just… I guess I still don’t get how you didn’t go stir-crazy.”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just waiting for someone to fucking show me that going through this means something. Maybe if I do it one hundred times they’ll let me go somewhere else. I don’t… I don’t know.”

The last sentence is spoken hastily but quietly, and Dean recognizes the tone; it’s the same one he used when he broke down in Bobby’s yard after Famine, and the same one he used when he said yes, and isn’t it fun that he feels more alive now that he’s dead than _then_? Now, oh, now he’d give anything to go back and to have another chance. Which he apparently isn’t going to get.

 _Fuck this_ , he thinks, and his free hand grabs Eddie’s free arm; he jerks it in his own direction without much finesse, and they’re staring again at each other again. Same height, probably same expression, he figures (or at least, Eddie looks kind of lost and Dean feels kind of lost, so he figures his face probably mirrors Eddie’s), and it’s relieving that Eddie actually blinks. At least it isn’t a staring contest with Cas, where blinking is out of the question.

“Well,” Dean says then, his voice sounding strangely loud in the empty room and in the utter silence from outside, “I don’t know either, but fuck if there isn’t a reason we’re both here.”

“Yeah, and what would that be? Enlighten me.”

“That’s asking too fucking much,” Dean breathes, and then leans forward and Eddie jerks forward too and Dean isn’t too surprised when their lips clash together. It’s not a nice kiss and not even a planned one, because that surely hadn’t been on Dean’s mind until it happened. It’s harsh and desperate and he feels blood after a short while when Eddie’s teeth bite down on his lip, but neither of them stops it. Eddie’s hands grab his shoulders and Dean raises up his own so that his fingers can tug on Eddie’s hair. Before it’s over the both of them are pressed so close that it’s painful, but it’s good because it’s _something_. It ends as harshly as it started, the both of them gasping loud when they part, but Dean doesn’t move much. There’s a warm body against his and it feels way too good to even thinking about moving away. And since Eddie doesn’t move an inch either, he thinks he might not be alone here.

“Christ,” Eddie breathes, “I hadn’t exactly planned that.”

“If it consoles you, I hadn’t either.”

Dean doesn’t say that he kind of wants to do it again. It was painful but it felt better than most things have felt since he said that goddamn three-letter word. Not to mention that he might be dead, but he can feel his skin itching for touch, he can feel blood rushing through his veins, he feels them throbbing with need, and he doesn’t even know how to put it into words.

This is so fucked.

But then he opens his eyes and looks at Eddie and the other is looking at him with wrecked eyes, seeming larger than they actually are, this close; there’s a hand on Dean’s neck and it’s sort of rubbing skin on automatic, and Dean has to bite his tongue not to let a sob out. It’s too much, too fucking much, and not anything he can deal with, not when he hasn’t really been with anyone like this in months. Then again, why not? They’re both stuck here, they get each other, maybe they even like each other as two people who would have maybe been very good friends (in another life or world, less fucked than the ones they come from) would like each other. Why shouldn’t they get something good out of it? Or at least, why shouldn’t they try to feel good at least for a short while?

He’s trying to find words to put it, but Eddie speaks first. The guy wasn’t lying when saying that talking was his strong feature.

“Please swear that if we do this instead of stopping it now as it would probably be sanest, things don’t get awkward.”

“What?”

“I can’t do it if after we’re done you have some zombie gay freak out.”

“Dude, I had a very not platonic thing for an angel. I doubt I’d get that at this point,” Dean answers, and suddenly he feels slightly better. It’s like something lifted from the air which is now way less thick with tension. “Now, maybe I should be worried about you,” he adds.

Eddie’s face suddenly loses its haunted look and he full on smirks at Dean.

“You don’t know who the fuck are you dealing with. Like hell I’d freak out over _you_ after every fuckery I’ve been through.”

Dean hopes that he’s smirking back convincingly enough.

“Then why don’t you just show me how exactly you wouldn’t, Mr. _Dean_?” he asks back, trying not to think about how crazy is that he’s literally flirting with a guy named like himself, more or least, while floating in the goddamn fucking darkness and while the both of them aren’t among the living anymore.

“Please allow me,” Eddie whispers, his tone now slightly mocking, and then he’s kissing Dean again. But it isn’t as violent as it was before. It’s slow, just lips at the beginning and a bit of tongue later, the kind of kiss that happens when you’re feeling a new person out, and Dean just goes with it because it feels good and he hasn’t had any in ages and well. If Sam knew he was making out with someone even after he died he’d probably have a laugh about it. Dean pushes the thought away. He can’t do this if he thinks about anyone he left behind, and it wouldn’t be fair either.

So he kisses back, as slowly, as nicely, because this is really a nice kiss and it’d be a pity if he was the one doing all the work. It’s easy to reciprocate, maybe because he really can’t hold on to any kind of baggage now that he doesn’t have an excuse to. Eddie tastes nice, too, and his mouth is warm and his hair feels soft under Dean’s rough fingertips; he gasps into the kiss when a hand starts unbuttoning his shirt. It doesn’t end though, and he lets Eddie push him into the room with the bed.

The kiss ends when Dean’s knees hit the back of a pretty uncomfortable mattress. There’s a glint in Eddie’s eyes that Dean thinks can be filed under the wicked category, and for some reason he’s glad about it. It means they’re trying to do this as they’d have done it if they hooked up in some bar for a one night stand.

“You aren’t half as bad at this, _Dean_ ,” Eddie whispers next to his ear, and his voice now sounds kind of amused.

“Well then, _Dean_ , you ain’t half as bad at that either.”

Eddie half-laughs against the skin in the hollow of Dean’s neck and then he shakes his head.

“Okay, really, that’s what I’d have called a mood killer had you said it ten minutes from now. Listen, either you call me by name and I do the same, or by surname and I do that, too. Deal?”

“Fine, fine, _deal_. Now, are you going to fuck me or are you just talking around?”

“Oh, you’ll fucking take that back,” Eddie says before pushing Dean forward. He falls straight into the bed, landing with a quite undignified thump, and then his shirt is being ripped, joining the jacket he discarded on the floor moments before.

Then his hands are being pressed against the bed and Eddie is pretty much covering him, and he’s still dressed, the fucker.

“Is someone being wild, here?” Dean asks, and Eddie answers by kissing him again, hard, and Dean doesn’t really mind that.

“You’re way too fucking clothed,” Dean mutters when they part, and Eddie gives him that wicked grin again before wetting the tips of two of his fingers in his mouth and then placing them on Dean’s nipple, drawing slow circles over it, and fuck if it doesn’t feel _good_. So good that it hardens in an embarrassingly short way, but Dean doesn’t exactly complain. Not when his cock became most definitely interested all the way through as Eddie scraped a nail on that hard, reddened surface on Dean’s chest.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll take care of that, too. But I have something else in mind, for now,” Eddie says, and it sounds like fucking sweet-talking, as he leans down to kiss Dean again, his tongue licking over the cut in Dean’s lower lip from that first time.

Meanwhile his hands are on Dean’s jeans, pushing them slowly down, and then the kiss ends, Eddie casts a look down and he kind of really bites back a laugh.

Which isn’t what Dean would have expected.

“Seriously, what the fuck?”

“Dude, you seriously told an angel he could ride you while you went commando?”

“So what?” Dean snaps back. If Michael wanted to complain, his goddamn fucking business.

“Nothing. I just think I’ve got a new whole respect for you.”

And then he winks and goes down on him.

Dean doesn’t even try to bite back the moan fighting to be let out from the back of his throat the second Eddie takes his cock into his throat in a swift motion that speaks of practice; and well, damn, Eddie’s a pretty darn nice sight under there. His hair is falling over Dean’s stomach, covering the scar over his eye, and his mouth is pink and stretched and he’s totally deep throating by now, and Dean can just close his eyes and tug on Eddie’s hair because this feels way too good.

Then it feels _better_ because Eddie most definitely knows what catching a clue means, and so he starts sucking faster, his head moving upwards and downwards with such an easy sway that Dean can barely keep up with it. Eddie’s tongue is also doing something that is downright not legal, flickering under the head of Dean’s cock at times, then randomly licking, and fuck, fuck, he’ll never last long. Not when he’s so hard that he doesn’t know if he can stand it, and who’d have told him that dead people could give such good head?

Dean can only try to match up, his hips jerking up, even if he tries not to lose control; it’s ridiculous since if you’re dead you can’t really choke, he figures, but he feels pleasure and he figures that if he does Eddie could feel pain, too. And that wasn’t really the point of the both of them doing this. So he just arches up his neck and tugs at Eddie’s hair as he realizes that he’s close. But Eddie just keeps on doing his thing down there, sucking him in even faster, until Dean jerks and comes hard into Eddie’s mouth, white light exploding beneath his eyelids, his fingers getting tangled in soft, long hair, and he really doesn’t think about anything.

Not until he comes to as Eddie is literally licking him clean. He barely has the strength to object, not that he wants to, and so he lies over there and tries to focus at how good it feels, at how nice is it to have hands gripping his hips without strictly holding him down.

“Fuck,” he mutters when he realizes that Eddie’s head is on level with his own, “that was something.”

“Oh, I’m honored. I hope I showed you enough of my skill in the department.”

“You might have, but you haven’t exactly stood up to your word.”

“Don’t worry about that. I was a lot of things, but I never didn’t do something I said I would.”

“Then please have your way and show me again,” Dean breathes, and damn, he thinks as Eddie leans down and they kiss again, slowly, lazily, like they have all the time in the world, and then again they may have it as well, he isn’t used to this. He’s the one who usually seduces, the one usually sweet talking, the one usually having his way with girls; but for some reason it just feels good to lay back and just doing the flirting. Maybe it’s because the both of them are so similar, maybe it’s because it’s just the both of them and they don’t have a zilch to lose, but he feels comfortable, he feels okay.

It’s not that hard to pretend that he’s twenty-five and that he’s in a bed with someone he just totally hit off with in a pause between hunts, and so he just lets himself be like this. He pushes Eddie’s flannel away and well, fuck, for a former junkie the guy has a goddamn fine body, all lithe muscle and tanned skin. He still has some fainted white scars in the crook of his elbow but they’re barely visible and it’s a fucking nice visual indeed.

When Eddie finally gets rid of his jeans, it’s even nicer.

“Thank fuck,” Dean says, “I was sure we’d both go through another loop before you got naked.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie snaps back, but instead of pissed off he sounds pretty much in his element.

“Have your goddamned way,” Dean coos back as he spreads his legs, and Eddie gives him the wicked grin again and brings to fingers wet with spit where Dean’s hole is. It doesn’t feel too intrusive, maybe because Eddie takes his own sweet time there, one finger first, then two, then three, as much as it goes. If Eddie kisses him again another couple of times while he does it, it’s good.

He arches up when Eddie’s fingers hit exactly the right spot, and crook slightly while there; he moans when Eddie starts scissoring and he doesn’t even think when he tugs Eddie’s head down. He was aiming to kiss him on the lips, but he doesn’t count the distances right; his mouth ends on the scar over Eddie’s eye. He feels Eddie literally shaking against him at that, even though it’s the good kind of shake, and then Eddie leans down and kisses him again, and Dean is so into it that when Eddie thrusts inside him with a single, straight push, it’s totally unexpected.

It was good, though, because it hurt just then, and not even that much. For a handful of seconds neither of them moves, and they both breathe heavily even if they don’t need that, and then Eddie is thrusting inside him again and Dean can just move along with him. He arches his neck up and hooks his ankles behind Eddie’s knees and yes, _yes_ , it feels so good, it feels like they’re moving as one person, it feels like for a second they can forget everything else, and then he comes again and Eddie comes after one last, deep thrust. By now that fine line between pleasure and pain is all but gone and Dean lets himself feel everything he thought he couldn’t feel anymore when he said yes while Eddie shakes above him.


	2. Chapter 2

“Have you ever tried looking inside the drawers?” Dean asks some time later. It’s probably the lamest pillow talk he has ever had with anyone, but for some reason his eyes ended up on the only piece of furniture in the room which actually has a couple.   
  
Eddie, who is currently lying next to him on the hard bed, the both of them still naked, just shrugs.   
  
“Not really. I assumed they’d be empty. The cupboard is, anyway. But if you’re dying to know, by all means, be my guest.” His voice is slightly flirty again and Dean finds that he really doesn’t mind; anyway, he stands up and moves across the room, picking his discarded jeans along the way.   
  
Drawer number one is empty, he finds out when he opens it.   
  
Drawer number two is an entire other story.   
  
Dean blinks and stares at the content for a good ten seconds, then shrugs and turns towards Eddie.   
  
“Any chance you know what is this?” he asks, taking out of the drawer a huge revolver, the handle made of sandal wood, most definitely a pretty fucking fine gun and nothing someone who doesn’t know exactly what to do with it could handle.   
  
Eddie is out of the bed in a second, not even picking the clothes along the way, and takes the gun from him in a haste; he stares at it for a good while, turning it in his hands, looking at it from every angle, his expression one of total surprise.   
  
His hands are shaking when he’s apparently done.   
  
“Christ, that’s my fucking gun. Or well. Roland’s gun, but he kinda gave that to me. I think you saw that.”   
  
“Did you have just one?”   
  
“Yeah, why…”   
  
Dean eyes the drawer and Eddie’s skin becomes the color of ash when he realizes that there’s the other gun in the set in there, too. Along with enough bullets to last for a while.   
  
\--   
  
When they get out of the house, the door closes with a sound of finality and Dean sees a gunslinger running across the desert again, and fuck if that sand isn’t bothersome; he coughs a couple of times, then turns to Eddie, who is currently turning both of the guns in his hands.   
  
“The fuck does this mean? I mean, what am I even supposed to do with these if I’m stuck here?”   
  
“Beats me, pal. But shouldn’t they be… not here?”   
  
“Well, yeah. One’s supposed to be in some dumpster in NY. The other… well, Roland should have it, right?”   
  
“Maybe. Or, I dunno, but if he’s looping or whatever it’s called every time then he… never gave it to you in theory, right? He should start fresh with the both of them.”   
  
“Yeah,” Eddie asks, his voice suddenly grim, “you probably have a point. Fuck this. Seriously, fuck this.”   
  
He’s looking at the guns like he’d destroy them if he could, and Dean is about to ask what the fuck is going on, but then Eddie shakes his head and his laugh is bitter.   
  
“It just feels like some kind of second hand prize. You worked your ass off, you helped your almighty hero become a better person, and since no one was going to have a use for these, you can keep them for a souvenir. It’s not like he remembers you, anyway.”   
  
Dean can see the point even too well. And Christ, he isn’t good at cheering people up, Sam was the one who could. He isn’t even good at making people feel better just by being there and staying silent. That was Cas’s thing, not his. Fuck, he wishes so much that he’d get another chance. But now he doesn’t and there isn’t much he can do, and so even if it’s chick-flick and he feels ridiculous, as soon as Eddie lays one of the guns on the ground he comes closer and grabs his hand.   
  
It feels goddamn fucking ridiculous but Eddie’s palm turns alongside his and then there’s a crushing grip around his fingers, and so he doesn’t let go.   
  
\--   
  
It doesn’t change that there needs to be an explanation.   
  
Dean thinks about it as he watches Eddie shooting people while naked for the second time. After all, Sam could have been the college smart one, but even if Dean never considered himself that much of a genius, he hunted alone for years and fuck, he even finished _Finnegan’s Wake_ , and he also understood it along the way; he can work this shit out. And so, since he also did read his share of mystery novels and saw enough detective movies, he decides to just take an example and try some deduction, here.   
  
So. He’s dead and stuck in the afterlife with another dead guy. The afterlife might be another world, for all they know. Check.   
  
They might be dead, but their hearts beat, they have blood flowing, they most definitely feel pain and pleasure and they most definitely emit fluids when it’s required. So they really don’t look dead. Check.   
  
He and the dead guy knew each other from another time, sort of, and they like each other. Quite enough. Check.   
  
The dead guy found two guns, one of which he used to own, in a drawer. Guns that should in theory be elsewhere. One in a dumpster, one lost in… either time or space. Conveniently, there’s two of them. So, someone must have taken the effort to take them and put them there. Also, dead guy would’ve never found them if Dean hadn’t been around. Check.   
  
So, he might have been here because he was meant to find the guns. Good theory. Plausible, even. It still doesn’t explain anything, because if they found them then they obviously need to do something with them, and it can’t be sitting around a house in the sand.   
  
Wait.   
  
Dean stands up and moves forward, not worried about the whole screen thing (it moves along with them). They’re still in a desert, in theory, but the sand isn’t there anymore. The air is clean and while for that minute in which they saw both the man in black and the Roland guy it was fucking  _hot_ , now it’s chilly.   
  
And when Dean woke up it was the exactly same thing.   
  
“Eddie?” he asks, his voice shaking. “Can you answer me a question?”   
  
Eddie turns to him and rushes to his side, probably having noticed that Dean’s entire frame is also half-shaking.   
  
“What the fuck?”   
  
“I think I got it. But I need an answer. Each time this loop started, you felt like you were in the desert just at the beginning, right? I mean, whenever it starts you feel sand and heat and wind and then it stops and there’s just the whole seeing-your-life thing, right?”   
  
“Yeah. I thought it was weird, but I never really…”   
  
“Oh Jesus fucking Christ almighty,” Dean whispers, his voice shaking, because he thinks he has it, and if he does, then they’re not done with the world yet. Or the world isn’t done with them. Or  _this_  world isn’t, at least.   
  
“Man, you’re scaring the hell out of me. What…”   
  
“The beginning. It isn’t like the rest. The beginning is  _real_ .”   
  
Eddie raises an eyebrow and shakes his head.   
  
“I’m not following you. What the fuck do you even mean?”   
  
“I mean, have you ever tried leaving during that minute? Because I think we could. I mean. Think about it. This thing follows us around and doesn’t let us go far, but the air is clean, there isn’t sand, the temperature is okay. We can’t leave. But if we tried when we actually can feel the place we’re in?”   
  
Eddie’s eyes suddenly widen in understanding and then he falls on his knees to the ground. Dean joins him. He really doesn’t have the force to stand up.   
  
“It means that whoever’s in fucking charge is actually…”   
  
“I think they’re giving you a chance to fix things before they even start. I… I think that every time it starts, we’re in one of the loops. Or maybe always the same one. We just never jumped into it, but if we did we could just, follow them, your pal and the other one, I mean, and maybe catch up with ‘em, and… I mean, think about it. You didn’t find the guns before, and no way you could do it without them. But suddenly I end up here instead of goddamn Heaven or Hell. And having been in both of them, well, you know… That’s my goddamn world. It’d have made sense if I had ended up there. Except that I’m here. And guess what, we already met once, we hit off pretty nicely…”   
  
“That’s an understatement,” Eddie snickers, and Dean feels some of the tension draining.   
  
“Yeah, well, that. Then I find the guns. Which apparently, are two.”   
  
Eddie’s eyes widen again as he nods.   
  
“Sounds to me like someone wants me to be part of this, too.”   
  
“Oh, Jesus. Yeah. We could follow them. I could reach Roland before he starts making mistakes again. And we were four in our ka-tet, and I know how the whole thing works, and if Jake turns up, which I think might happen at this point, we’d be four before he even spoke to goddamn Flagg, and… and oh  _fuck_ . You could actually go back.”   
  
“ _What_ ?” Dean almost shouts. He hadn’t taken that into account.   
  
“Yeah. I mean, either we find the black sphere thing again or whatever, but there  _are_  ways to open a door on a specific world. So even if that archangel killed you in your own, if you find the right door or if you  _make_  it the right one, you could definitely take a nice trip back. You saw how Susannah did, right?”   
  
Eddie’s slightly smiling now, and Dean can feel his own face matching the expression.   
  
“Fuck, you’re right. And if you don’t get yourself killed maybe you could go up that Tower with your guy and maybe that’s what it takes to break the loop? Or you can convince him not to go up at all. If he remembers you, ‘course…”   
  
“Dude. I have his own guns. And I know him well fucking enough. I’ll make him.” Eddie is downright grinning now, and Dean thinks he’s, too, and damn, they might actually have a way out of here.   
  
“Seems like we both can gain something outta this, huh?”   
  
“My friend, that’s pretty much it, if you ask me. And that stated, if next time this starts we’re really trying to get out, take this.”   
  
Eddie hands him one of the guns and Dean almost refuses to take it; when he does, his fingers are slightly trembling.   
  
“Are you sure? I really…”   
  
“Man, I never learned to shoot with two fucking guns at the same time. And if you’re coming with me, you’re not coming weaponless.”   
  
“I never shot anything with a beauty like  _this_ !”   
  
Eddie just rolls his eyes and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Man, seriously, you’re perfectly fucking worthy of a goddamn gun. Trust me on that.”   
  
Then he turns all of a sudden, takes his, checks it for a second, then aims and shoots five perfectly aligned holes in the wall of the house.   
  
“Show me what you got,” he says then, and fuck, Dean thinks, he’s different while handling a gun. It seems like it’s another of his limbs, and well, fucking makes sense. Guy was a gunslinger, of course he can shoot.   
  
It’s not like Dean can’t shoot, either.   
  
“I’m game,” he says, and then he aims. The gun feels incredibly heavy in his hand, but his fingers fit just right around the handle, and he knows a good weapon when he handles one. And this is a pretty fucking fine beauty. And Dean learned how to shoot before his twelfth birthday and Eddie’s right, he can’t just start finding himself unworthy of guns which aren’t his and are way finer than anything he ever shot some son of a bitch with.   
  
He narrows his eyes, aims a couple of inches below Eddie’s holes and shoots.   
  
After, there’s a second row of five identical holes under the first in the wall.   
  
Eddie whistles as soon as he notices it.   
  
“Man, you’re goddamn fucking worthy of shooting with that, for all I care.”   
  
Dean barely hears him; he’s too satisfied with himself to care, and then it hits him. He hasn’t felt like  _this_  in ages. Like he could take over the world with just that gun in his hand and someone watching his back. Like he can do something and do it well. And he hasn’t felt a rush at shooting at something in a very, very long while.   
  
He has an idea that however it ends, he surely won’t get bored. And if he ever manages to get back home and see Sam and Cas again, he most definitely won’t make the same mistakes and he’ll sure as fuck won’t waste it as he wasted the last six months feeling sorry for himself.   
  
“Well,” he says then, tucking the gun inside the waistband of his jeans, marveling at how great it fits there, “then we’re a team?”   
  
Eddie literally beams at him as he slaps his shoulder. “Fuck yes, we are. Now we just need to wait it out. Damn, waiting is going to feel so horrible. We’re barely at the beginning of the whole thing.”   
  
“I guess we’ll just keep each other entertained until then?” Dean asks again, and damn, he hasn’t sounded this cocky in ages.   
  
“So we’re friends with benefits now, at least until we get out of here?” Eddie retorts, moving just slightly closer, and Dean thinks he likes the sound of that.   
  
“Deal,” he answers, and the kiss coming after isn’t anything like the one that happened when he sealed another kind of contract.   
  
\--   
  
They get out of the house as soon as the darkness seems to be lifting. Just a bit, but Eddie is an expert, and says they’ll have to be out in the dark for just seconds.   
  
They are, and then there’s a desert in front of them. Sand, and heat, and wind, and it feels real.   
  
“Are we ready?” Eddie asks, the gun in his hand.   
  
“Lead the way,” Dean answers, his voice steady and sure, as he draws out his own.   
  
\--   
  
_Someplace else, and we can’t say where and when because it really transcends space and time, someone else is watching everything from his metaphorical first row seat, and he’s smiling like someone who knows what’s a job well done when he sees one. As they leave the house, a candy wrapper is disintegrated into the air and a bar of very fine chocolate materializes in its place.  
  
“Well, Dean, now you can’t say I never did anything for you, either, especially since you did realize you had to say yes,” he says, even though he didn’t do that just for Dean. He never really liked the way that part of the universe worked, so he’s just solving two problems with one action. And thank fuck he likes book series, or he’d have never found out about that particular part of the universe.  
  
Hey, there are a_  bunch  _of worlds, one can’t know them all.  
  
“This’ll be fucking_  fun _,” he smirks, and then he snaps his fingers and starts digging in the box of chocolates that just materialized._   
  
\--   
  
The man in black flew across the desert and three gunslingers followed.   
  
End.


End file.
